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Ask HN: I own a large adult business and am moving to the Bay Area soon
90 points by throwaway12818 on Jan 28, 2018 | hide | past | favorite | 43 comments
Hi folks,

Long time HN member here. Using throwaway account for obvious reasons.

I am a serial entrepreneur with multiple exits in different industries. Right now I operate an adult business with millions of daily users.

I am moving to the bay area soon and trying to understand how I should present and market myself there. I have heard mixed things about adult industry reputation in the bay area. Some say that the environment is very liberal and people actually have a good reaction to this industry, others say that VCs don't do business with anyone who has touched adult.

Please keep in mind that I am going to sell this business in a few years and will start something non-adult related after. So it is important for me to not let reputation from being part of the adult industry hurt my chances for getting investments and talents for my next idea.

Thanks in advance for your insights!

Cheers!



With a successful enough exit, you don't particularly need VC money for future businesses. And your business name should have the standard discreet naming system - something generic for putting on resumes, rather than something explicit like "titties-r-us LLC".

Past that, the conversation is about a generic video site, and you can talk about content and bandwidth and getting traffic etc without ever mentioning that it's porn. Don't lie if asked outright, of course, but competent people should be able to read through the lines and notice that you have the good sense to keep the porn involvement discreet.

Like, people don't punish you for being involved in porn unless they're super Puritan. They punish you for not having the good sense to shut up about it and the related risk of you embarrassing them by association. Demonstrate that you can talk about your business activities without being crude and they'll be more willing to play ball.


This is a great advice, thank you! This is more and less how I have been approaching this industry so far.


Well, his username might be relevant... :)


Not unless you're really into airplanes and mechanical engineering.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thrust_vectoring


Kidding aside, I was thinking rockets.


Well, Kink.com just moved to Nevada. But that was because California OSHA started requiring condoms for porn. Also, because the once-abandoned SF Armory was now too valuable a piece of real estate for that use.

The only other porn producer I knew in SF gave it up around 2007 when she moved to Texas. SF used to have a film scene, but it relied on cheap large spaces being available, and those are all gone.


> Well, Kink.com just moved to Nevada. But that was because California OSHA started requiring condoms for porn.

Wait, what? Prop 60 failed. When did OSHA change their stance?

The whole reason Prop 60 happened is because Michael Weinstein was mad that OSHA wouldn't punish people who filmed porn without condoms. It was technically a violation before, but only enforced in response to complaints, and the fine was minimal.


>Michael Weinstein

This guy seems to waste so much AIDS Healthcare Foundation money on personal propositions. Too bad they haven't been investigated yet on CharityNavigator.


They moved to other locations (including Southern California) to cut costs: https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/2017/01/25/kink-com-to-stop-filmin...


He didn't say he was moving the adult business to SF.


Did they sell the Armoury?


No, they're leasing space in it. I once read that Peter Ackworth owns the Armory personally, and just leased it to his company, Kink.com.


https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/pgwkkz/kinkcom-is-shutter...


I fully expect California to come out soon and say:

"WARNING: Sex contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm."


Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News?


I'm not a super networker or anything, but I've never met anyone involved with adult entertainment that admitted it, or VCs that openly invest in it. I always thought of it more as an LA thing.

I honestly don't think we're so liberal you won't have reputation problems later on, but with multiple exits you have a track record to offset.


I got chatting to the camera person before my talk at a JavaScript event once, just about AV stuff. I assumed he was a programmer who also shot events, but when I started talking tech he mentioned he wasn't a programmer, and was down from LA and normally shoots adult on some well known sites.


When I was working for a pro audio company out of LA, I ran into a product manager there who had been a sound engineer for porn. Good person.


Well, Cyan Bannister went on from founding Zivity to be a partner at Founders Fund.


I will suggest you read the book Mayflower Madame. She discreetly ran a call girl service in New York while hobnobbing with refined, elite people. That might give you some sense of how to handle yourself.


I think it's highly likely that you're going to run into problems if you don't know in advance which people are probably cool with it.

The Bay Area is incredibly fucking square. Square square square. An outspoken contingent of people here like to talk a good talk about their openness, but it's a facade that belongs to a constellation of myths people like to believe about themselves.

I would avoid run-of-the-mill hoi polloi "startup founders" and all associated professional/networking events like the plague. Some of them have their heads so far up their assess that they will take zero interest in what you do for a living and never even ask, but a lot of them are nosy as fuck and will make it really hard for you to cleanly maintain the veneer of whatever you've decided you're going to say about what you do. A lot of the nosiness is driven by egoic insecurity and class politics.

Every person I know who I could guarantee would be cool with it is super wealthy-- most of them 8 figures+ net worth. Your priority should be meeting them. They can help you navigate the square waters and figure out where, and with whom, it's safe to be real. If you want an intro to some of those people I could probably help you out. As a last resort-- and I hate to say this-- join The Battery but avoid everyone under the age of 40 or so.

Edit to add: wealth managers will be helpful for making connections to the right people. Networking with them is an easy "in." Most will want to know you even if they don't think you'll let them manage your money.


There is one thing people definitely aren't liberal about... sexual harassment, especially by people in power. Let's assume that you aren't that person, and perhaps even took a training seminar to make sure you are thinking about such things. Good, but it's your employees too. I'd encourage you to think about things like a senior engineer misbehaving, and how your response as CEO could effect your reputation. Also some people may try to join your company thinking they will get a pass.

Frankly if I was running any business in the bay area, but especially an adult one, I'd want someone working for me helping to both build a professional culture of appropriate behavior (with regular mandatory seminars for both new and continuing employees), and building mechanisms for reporting and dealing with issues responsibly (IE not just covering your ass) should that culture fail to prevent problem behavior.

Be proactive about it, to the extent you can.


Hey Mate, Just be yourself and own being yourself. In my opinion people if your a good person, enjoyable to work with, and mean well you will rise to the top no matter what. Some people use excuses as crutch for being shitty people. You got this. Good Luck.


What’s the driver to relocate prior to selling the adult business?


The reason is out of my control and family related.


Considering how very little sex happens in and how many surplus males there are in the Bay Area, it’s probably not such a bad move.


Do you own production or just distribution? You might just need a generic name. Lookup Manwin/MindGeek


Does he/she mean porn when saying Adult business?


Yes it is a pornography website.


Why was this flagged?


I have no idea why they have flagged my post! I am asking a honest question about the bay area culture. It seems even mentioning adult industry gets you flagged there!


HN users are overwhelmingly not in the Bay Area. Perhaps 10% are. It's been a while since I looked at the numbers.


10% seems like a pretty large share for a single locale. Are there any geographic regions that are of a similar size with as large a HN viewership?

Also, the original question seems broad enough to be applicable to people outside of the Bay Area. In essence the OP was asking how to soften the stigma of an adult business background to future investors.


I'd like to know that as well. It seems like a perfectly reasonable Ask HN.


Me three. This is an honest question. There are other industries that I'm personally opposed to (at least in practice), but that's no reason to flag a solid, honest question.


Four


Why would you move someplace with hyperexpensive real-estate and overpriced dev talent?


Why other IT people do it? Probably same reason: to launch some cool new project and raise funding for it.

OP asks if he can prove himself as worthy to VCs by bragging about his successes in the porn area.

With 0 first hand experience with Valley VCs, i'd say that i absolutely respect everyone who makes money in the porn business. Because it is damn hard. I tried and failed miserably and i don't consider myself a dumb guy. This is an ultra-competitive field.


Not to mention high state taxes which you have to pay when you sell that business...


Agreed. A lot of the value of Silicon Valley is the networking and easy access to top talent. It works if you want to be the first to do, say, AR blueprints for construction sites. But most competitors in porn just die of starvation.


I would move to LA instead. Slightly lower cost of living and respectable tech presence.


This guy can afford it.


It's the world's best unicorn factory.




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